Readers respond to Tamayo, the First Maier Museum Deaccession, Offered Next Week:
Erik Neil, executive director of the Heckscher Museum of Art in Huntington, NY, writes:
This is a sad expedient for a college with such a distinguished legacy
in the arts. A quick fix now and then in a couple years there will be
reports about new financial and management problems. This sale will not
solve the ongoing failure of leadership. The current and future
students at Randolph College are being short changed.
Roy (Bud) Johns, a collector and plaintiff in the charitable trust suit pending in Virginia Supreme Court, which challenges recent changes at Randolph College, writes:
Bravo for your Maier Museum/Tamayo column and your continuing
opposition to such sales. The college’s president and board of trustees
continue to be inaccurate in their statements. One of
the two suits on which the Virginia Supreme Court will rule soon (the
breach of contract suit) is strictly about the coeducational issue and
not the art. The other, however, the charitable trust suit, definitely
involves the art (among other things) and the issues of donor intent.I never knew Stephen Clark [the famed collector who donated the Tamayo to the Randolph College] but I’ve read much about him and his
brother and I seriously question whether he intended for his gift of
this great painting to the impressive permanent collection of a small
women’s college to end up on the block at Christie’s.